Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History (and Future) of Dating

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

The history of lonely hearts ads might be a lot deeper than you'd expect.For as long as people have been printing newspapers, people (read: men) were enquiring about potential partners.By the time the culture took off in the 18th century, how were people looking for love? How did the First World War boost the medium? And what are some of the strangest dating stories from this history?Joining Kate today is Francesca Beauman, author of Shapely Ankle Preferr’d: a history of the Lonely Hearts advertisement, to find out how lonely heart ads created a new way to date. In part two of the episode, Kate's joined by Ana Kirova, CEO of the dating app Feeld, who recently published a report with the Kinsey Institute on where dating culture is today, and where it could lead in the future.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy, the producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here. This is betwixters sheets. You are you and you have got your listening ears on. Do we all have our listening ears on?

Excellent. In which case, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, broken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adults subjects, and you should be an adult too. And we call that the fair do's warning

because if you've listened to that and you keep listening and you happen to get offended, tough t'-de-st. That's on you. because fair do's, we did warn you. Hello, and thank you for meeting me for lunch. I know it's a busy time of year.

These bustling coffee shops of George and London really are the places to see and be seen right now. I love what the landlady Mrs. Miggins has done with the place. And it's here that we can take a browse to the latest newspapers and something that really caught my attention are these newfangled, lonely heart ads. Gone are the stuffy courting traditions of yesteryear. We can now find our partners on the...

the printed page will wonders never cease. This one seeks a woman with good teeth, soft lips, sweet breath and neat in her person, her bosom, full and plump, firm and white. Well, he doesn't sound like a dick at all. That one's going to be a hard pass from me. But how did dating traditions from this period evolve with the invention of the lonely heart ad? And how did it change in the following centuries? Another coffee please, Mrs. Miggins. And I am going to stick around to find out. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Shoots, the history of sex scandal in society with me, K. Lister. Can you even remember a time before we were meeting people through apps? Well, apparently there was such a time. I mean, people have always been finding ways to meet one another,

but it was in the 17th century that people started to post lonely hearts adverts in the flourishing printing press. And it was only a hop, skip and a jump from there to getting ghosted on Tinder. In today's episode, I will first be speaking to Francesca Bowman, author of Shapley Ankle preferred a history of the Lonely Hearts advertisement to find out how lonely heart ads through history created a new way for city dwellers to date. And also how it created new opportunities for scams. Think Tinder Swindler of the 19th century. And for the second part of this episode, I'll be talking to Anna Kirover, CEO of the dating app field. And she's going to tell us all

about dating culture today and where it could lead to in the future. Including research that they've done which reveals surprising findings about what Gen Z are fantasising about. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm ready. Let's crack on. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Francesca Bowman. How are you doing? Hello, very well.

I'm glad to be here. I'm thrilled that you're here, although I feel that maybe I should have put out a sort of a lonely heart's advertisement to ask for someone to come on the podcast. Like, blonde podcaster seeks author extraordinaire in the history. of Lonely Heart to come on and talk about it, because that's your subject area. It is exactly. Of course, we're going to immediately have to write you one, you know, partner or no partner. In fact, one of the reasons I came to the subject was when I was first dating my now

husband, I used to spend hours trawling through the Lonely Hearts ads as in what was then the Sunday newspapers and have always been interested in them, whether I had a partner or not. They always fascinated me. I remember them. Because now we've got Tinder and Bumble and so many of them. And they've kind of, they've sort of gone past being cool and have just gone into something. They're just sort of there. Like no one really thinks anything of them now.

But I remember when dating adverts, lonely hearts, there was something kind of tragic about them. And they were like a punchline almost. Absolutely tragic, slightly racy, slightly weird. But now they're the primary way where people meet their partner. So 29% of people meet their partner through some kind of dating app or website followed only by people meeting their future partner at work and university. So it really has become mainstream. I think, though, it's interesting the amount of stigma that still is involved. To some extent, it hasn't gone away totally sadly.

And that's certainly something we can talk about. But yeah, there's been a shift in perception for sure over the last few hundred years, really. So you've always been interested in them, even if it was a sort of a passing curiosity of like, ooh, let's look at this week's. Well, so I claimed, Kate. So I claimed. But what point did you think, I think that there's a history to this? I think I want to write a book. Yeah, great question. So I was always interested in them. And as a historian, we're always with an eye for a subject. And I've always been interested in the history of slightly strange things. My first book was about the history of the pineapple. I love that.

I'm always on the lookout for a quirky subject like that. So having always been interested in them, I just popped down to the library one day to look into how far they went back. You know, those idle questions. Oh, you know, I wonder when the first ad was. And when you first start researching them, there's a lot of information about how they started

in the 20th century in the 1920s. But when I actually went to the newspapers and the first magazines sat in the British Library and trawled my way through. I was flabbergasted and also, of course, thrilled to find a lonely hearts ad as far back as 1695, so much earlier than anyone realised. And immediately I knew I had a story, well, indeed a book on my hands, because this was just entirely new information, a completely new source of evidence for so many aspects of the human existence. So it was a really, it was a thrilling moment, actually. I can't believe, well, I can't

because you're telling me, but I'm really surprised that they go back that early. I guess I would have thought it would be something the Victorians came up with 1695. 1695, really with the first magazines and the first newspapers, you get the first lonely hearts ads. And this is a pattern that plays out more widely in terms of the development, the history of the way humans use new forms of technology, as we would call it, of any sense. So whether it's the printing press or newspapers or the silicon chip or the internet, really one of the first uses we have for those are the building of relationships and sex, you know, whether it's pornography on the internet or pornography in the first printing press or dating, you know, Lonely Hearts ads with the very first magazines

and newspapers, they emerge very, very quickly. It's a primary use that humans put these new forms of technology too. Wow. I was just going to ask you what medium was this very early Lonely Hearts advert in because I'd completely forgotten that they did have pamphlets and magazines at this point. Like this wasn't just somebody who'd printed something out on a piece of paper and was just handing it out. Yeah, I mean only just. Absolutely. But only just. It was a very, very early one. It was a pamphlet called not very thrillingly a collection for improvement of husbandry and trade, which, you know, doesn't sound a laugh a minute, but it was published by a sort of popular London figure

called John Horton, advertise all kinds of merchandise. And in July 1695 on page three, in amongst an ad for a coblous apprentice and an Arabian stallion and a second-hand bed, I found this ad. I know, I found this ad that goes, a gentleman about 30 years of age

that says he had a very good estate would willingly match himself to some good, young, gentlewoman that has a fortune of £3,000 or thereabouts, and he will make settlement to content. And then another one right below it. So, you know, in some ways it seemed very out of place. But of course, in another way, it's just another example of the emergence of the marketplace, of commercialising matchmaking in a way that brings marriage into line with, you know, rooms to rent or the arrival of a consignment of tea from the Indies. You know, It's just another service, really, isn't it?

It is, I suppose. There was this one, and underneath it was a completely different one. So I guess it must have been known that this was a thing that you did for two people to have written in. Yeah, that's a good question. So there was one right below it of a 25-year-old man. He said he's been brought up a dissenter and is sober, very important, to putting your lonely hearts out at that time. The bar is low.

The bar really is very low. I think those were the first ones. What's interesting is actually there had been. in joke ones in earlier years and in a way that set the stage for them to be used in a more sincere way and really becoming a very early piece of evidence about, you know, what men are looking for in a woman really. What's the idea of the perfect late 17th century woman? Okay. So the earliest ones are men. Is there any evidence that women were writing Lonely Hearts Adverts? Because I'm very curious about this because if you've ever been on the dating apps,

you'll know that there is quite a strict divide between how men experience it and how women experience it. I mean, were these women getting sketches of penises being sent to them? It's an amazing idea that early on, isn't it? Not as far as I have evidence of Kate, but I mean, who knows?

Maybe they were, you know, pinned up on a tree stump somewhere. Who knows? I would say in the early days of Lonely Hearts ads, certainly it was almost all men who were placing them. Because, of course, in those days to place them, You needed the money, you needed the time to go down to the newspaper or magazine office. You needed the freedom. It was also an incredibly bold and brave thing to do.

And so with the restrictions on women's lives at the time, that was certainly kind of tricky logistically to make it happen. It wasn't until quite a lot later that you get the first ads from women. And one of the earliest appeared in 1761 in a Birmingham newspaper, which was a very long as well. addressed to men of sense, and it just said wanted for two young ladies whose persons are amiable, straight and free. But imagine how brave you'd have to be as a woman. Isn't it? That's a balshy move, that is. Isn't it? Rather than just sitting at home waiting for some bloke to turn up and rescue you from, you know, your life as a single woman, which as you and I know, in those days was a fate worse than death. Of course. These women were really, you know, putting themselves

out there and taking control of their own destiny, or at least trying to, of course. We have no evidence for whether these ads worked or not. See, that's true, because that's the thing that you never get with this. You never get a follow-up. They never print later on to say, thanks everyone for writing in. I've gone on a date with Ethel. It went really well. Does that ever happen?

Have you ever found that of like a follow-up outcome? Yeah, it's definitely very frustrating. It being so rare to be able to find out what happened next. and usually when one does, it's because something went wrong. It's because either the ad turned out to be a scam or fraud was committed or bigamy or, you know, even worse, like a merge or something. So you tend to hear what happened next when it goes really dark and sad. What you don't hear, of course, because it's far less interesting is, yeah, we met and we got married and we lived happily ever after. Because, of course, no one really cares about that, right?

That's not as interesting. Only historians. Oh, of course. We care hugely, but only historians. And it does mean then some of these characters really stay with one. So you asked about ads from women. There was one in the Times newspaper really quite soon after it was first founded in 1788 from this woman called Eleanora, who I honestly still think about. And she placed this ad that said a lady about 25 years of age who has been flattered with the idea of possessing an agreeable person. solicits the attention of any young gentleman of birth, education and personal consequence. The ill usage of her relations has obliged her to separate herself from them. And they in revenge not only employ their utmost malice to disturb her oppose, but threaten prosecutions to deprive her of her fortune, etc, etc. So, you know, it's this very dramatic situation that Eleanor finds herself in.

And, you know, I do still wonder what happened. Eleanor. I know. Wow. It captures the imagination, doesn't it? And it also shows you how vulnerable women were because Eleanor at there has written into a paper and has just basically said anyone, absolutely anybody, because she's got no family support anymore.

Exactly. And in those days, if you weren't married, there were very, very few ways of gaining financial security. And so for most women, that was their only way to get a roof over their head in the sort of stable way. I know. So those early ads from women, it's really striking the sort of sense of, of, I'm afraid, desperation that emanates off the page. You know, there's one woman in 1781. She talks about she's desirous of freeing herself from the control of her cruel and capricious guardian. You know, there's lots of widows, lots of orphans. It's really sad. That is, isn't it? If you're writing in

to these newspapers, pamphlets, and you can tell me what other publications carried this stuff, there is always the issue, and people forget this, of who is holding your information? And this is what was the undoing of the Ashley Madison scandal, is because people handed over all their info and assumed it would be saved.

Like, who, how does this system work in the 17th and 18th centuries? You write in, and then does somebody read it and print it exactly, and then do they, like, facilitate it? take the replies? Like, how did it work? So how it worked in those days was you would physically take your written Lonely Hearts ad down to the newspaper office. You'd sit at home and write it and then either you or possibly your maid servant would take it down to the newspaper office, often in Fleet Street, if it was London or elsewhere. You'd hand it over to the newspaper editor usually because these were small operations. And then they would choose whether to print them. But of course, they almost

always did because newspaper editors at the time realized very quickly what an excellent source of entertainment these ads were, that they were going to sell newspapers. Of course. They were going to sell newspapers. They were no dummies. It's why the Times newspaper put these Lonely Hearts ads on its front page for many, many years in the early days. I know. Front page, yes. It's why it's ironic. Then years later, the Times newspaper would make these claims that they've never placed Lonely Hearts ads. Well, they jolly well did, and they had them on the front. You heard it here first. I have found newspaper articles writing about a lonely heart. Like something was so extraordinary that you'll find a newspaper story of like a young man is advertised for a wife and a pig and lives in.

Yes, yes. So they were clearly quite novelty items for a long time. Exactly. And seen as a source of entertainment. So you'd place the ad and often in the ad, it would say at the end, you know, please write to this newspaper office if you're interested and the newspaper office would then collect the replies. Frequently as well, though, their advertiser would say, please write to a certain coffee house, especially in London. Those were also a great place to receive any replies from potential suitors. I'm trying to get my head around that because there was a big coffee house culture in London in the 18th century. And it wasn't like Starbucks today, was it? Can you give me a description of what the coffee houses were like and why someone would be receiving lonely hearts ads there?

Yeah. So they were an invention of the 1650s and by 100 years later they were no longer quite as fashionable as they had been and they were trying to find other ways to draw in the punters and as a result, proprietors would often get subscriptions to newspapers and encourage their clientele to use these coffee houses as places to meet and chat and receive letters and whatever purpose you could use it for. As a result, they often pop up in sort of plays of the time as the sort of location of all sorts of intrigue. The appeal of coffee houses in many ways was the anonymity they offered.

And of course, that's really helpful for a Lonely Hearts ad. Someone could drop off a reply to Lonely Hearts Ad and not necessarily get spotted by their neighbour or their colleague. That makes sense. I suppose that a Lonely Hearts advert is it, Maybe it doesn't. Does it offer some kind of safe haven for people that might otherwise have been stigmatized in a society? Because I suppose it's a space where you can say, I don't have any money, and my husband's run off. Or do you still get this sense of decorum with them?

That's an interesting question. You know, how are people their true selves in ads like this? So we're all reinventing ourselves in any sort of advertising for love and saying, you know, we're a bit skinnier than we are, or a bit richer than we are, or a bit younger than we are. Exactly. So, you know, whatever it is that one is feeling insecure about, I think that can come across in the ads. I mean, in the early days, the lonely hearts were only placed by people of memes. So it was a pretty narrow demographic. It was basically rich white men were pretty much the only people placing these ads in the very early days. And so, you know, within that, obviously you get a pretty consistent and same. type of ad, both in terms of how they describe themselves and also what they're looking for in a possible partner. But they do quite frequently talk about, you know, I work very long hours so it's hard to meet people. I'm quite lonely. So there certainly is an honesty there sometimes in terms of why they're placing the ad. You know, they feel the need to explain themselves.

And you kind of forget that you really don't have to go back that far in our history when people, like if you were in love with the person you married, that was good. That was a nice thing. But a lot of these adverts, I want to say that they're business contracts, but a lot of them, it does sound like they are hiring somebody. Like, if you know, it's like the lady who desperately needs someone because a family hater, that isn't someone who's saying, I really love someone. That's saying, I need somebody to support me. That's what that's saying. Oh, absolutely. This was a society that was very blatant and open about the economy. basis of marriage. It's only in the course of the 18th century that we're just beginning to see

the rise of romantic love as a as a valid proposition. As you say, people thought being in love was a nice bonus, but it wasn't, you know, it was an absurd basis for a marriage. And marriage remains really a business transaction in many ways, you know, people placing ads saying, you know, they'd love to go into business with somebody who runs a pub or a tavern or they talk about, you know, that how much money they can offer or how much money they want from the person who replies to the ad or there's other people who are in a hurry saying, oh, you know, I want to get married before this year's harvest so that I've got help with the harvest. So they're very sort of practical, depressingly practical in many ways. Have you ever been able to track somebody down and find

the identity of somebody that placed a lonely heart's advert? Only the much later ones. So I trawled long and hard to try and find, you know, people in the 18th century or 19th century who had met through Lonely Hearts ads. And the only people I could find, I'm afraid, are people who ended up getting like murdered or in the newspapers because of fraud or bigamy. It wasn't until I put a call out for people in the 20th century that I got a few replies saying, oh, you know, my granny met grandpa in this way or this was a family story. But honestly, Kate, you'd be amazed how few stories. sort of come down through the generations. And I think, again, that speaks to the enduring stigma, really up until the early 2000s or the 2010s surrounding advertising for love. You know, people feeling like there must be something weird or wrong with you, which of course is not the case.

And we know that now. But for a really long time, people weren't prepared to admit it. So they just go, oh, yeah, you know, I met your father at a party. You know, oh, yeah, I've met him in the street. were a bit vague about how they got together. There was absolutely, and I remember it distinctly, there was a stigma of like only really weird people would be doing this. Only the most desperate would be doing this at all. Well, that's why with the first I'm dating websites, like when Match.com started,

the guy who ran it had to get his own girlfriend to, like, post on the dating website because he didn't have enough people because everyone thought it was massively weird. So, you know, they've come a long way in terms of society, accepting that in a post-industrialised society where most of us are not going to marry the vicar's son, right, or the girl next door or, you know, someone we meet at church or whatever in the way people did in the 17th and 18th century,

you know, in a post-industrial urbanised society, we're going to need new forms of matchmaking. And that has only become more and more urgent as the centuries have gone on and up until the present day. I'll be back with Francesca after this short break. What about the Victorians? I love the Victorians. I'm a proper fan of them.

They were absolutely crazy, crazy people. What was a Victorian Lonely Hearts culture like? So Victorian Lonely Hearts culture really broadened out. So advertising for a wife no longer was it confined solely to urban communities and no longer just to the well-off, those who could afford to place now. So the demographics of those both placing Lonely Hearts ads and replying to them really, really shifts and broadens. I was quickly minded of this fact when I found an ad in 1832 in the Dorset County Chronicle from a farmer named Charles Warren who put in an ad to look for a wife to help him look after his three children. But he says, I want a good, steady woman between 30 and 40-year-olds for a wife to help me look.

look after the children. I also want a woman to look after the pigs while I'm out at work. So he wanted, you know, someone who could do both. So it's very sort of practical. At least he's up front. Exactly. I completely agree. At least he's at upfront. And that, you know, if you take ads from around 1830 to 1860, they range in profession in the newspapers from, you know, a commander in the merchant services and a chemist and a officer in the Bengal army. So they're really kind of all kinds of people. And again, all around the country, they become much more popular outside of London

and you find them all over the UK. And is this when the lonely soldier trope came about? So the lonely soldier trope really sort of peaked quite a bit later during World War I. Oh, that makes sense. And after World War one. Yeah, when soldiers came back from war and wanted someone to share their life with.

They first appeared in TPs Weekly, which was a Irish magazine. And those lonely soldier ads are really, really touching. They're very vulnerable. Again, Lonely Hearts ads becoming much more vulnerable and personal than the ones 200 years prior to that. What kind of thing are they saying? Is it just, I'm a lonely soldier?

Were they actually serving on the front when they were advertising? No, they'd usually got back and had, for example, lost a leg or lost their sight. Or, again, that's the same when women are. in this period were placing ads. The writer, Vera Britton, record a ad that she saw in a newspaper in 1915 that said, Lady, fiancé killed, will gladly marry officer totally blinded or otherwise incapacitated by the war. I know. Wow.

Isn't it moving? Oh, so moving. So these women and men were both facing a difficult world, both during World War and post-war, you know, with three quarters of a million men killed in combat, there was real shortage of potential husbands. And so again, lonely hearts ads came into their own as as another form of matchmaking when people needed a bit of help. Is this a uniquely British thing? Were other countries doing Lonely Hearts adverts? So America was very much embracing Lonely Hearts ads. The first ads in America I found was in 1759 in Boston. I know, really, really early.

It's particularly spectacular because it was, it was. was placed by a young gentleman and his only criteria in a wife is that he wants someone who's under 40 and not deformed. That's all he's looking for. Very straightforward. And again, in America, just like in Britain, with industrialisation and the growth of the cities, once New York and Boston and Philadelphia have these population explosions, that's when you get the first newspapers and that's when you get the first ads, right?

Because you've got all these people moving to the cities. They don't know anyone. They don't have the community networks of your mum's, friend, daughter, or your dad's, colleagues, son. That makes sense. And so they've got to find other ways to find themselves a partner. So America really, really embraced them a little bit later, but there were hundreds of them.

Also embraced the crime wave that came with these lonely hearts ads, again, of various sort of core celebs, taking over the newspapers of horrible stories of people who were murdered because of a lonely heart sad. Well, we should talk about that because anyone that's done a couple of tours on the dating apps now will tell you there's a lot of bullshit. There is. But, you know, one doesn't want to be too negative about it.

The problem with the horror stories of Lonely Hearts ads is those are the ones you hear, right? And you don't hear as much about the success story. So, yes, in America, America's worst ever female serial killer was someone called Bell Gunniss, who in the 1910s murdered over 40 men that she met through personal ads that she placed in local magazines and newspapers. That's a bad day, isn't it? Oh, wait, even worse, she murdered them, chopped them up and buried them in her, you know, under the ground in her farm for her pigs to gradually eat. I mean, it's all horrific. What was she advertising? Do you, have you found any of her adverts survive? Yes, so she was advertising. She lived on her own on a farm in Indiana, and she

She advertised for our husband, but again, this was a time of lots of new immigrants coming to America, who again didn't have the sort of family connections or social networks or whatever. So she got a lot of Scandinavians replying who would sort of turn up and basically not be heard of again. And there are all these sort of letters that would turn up at Belgones's farm being like, oh, the last I heard of, you know, my brother or my son, they were coming to see you. And then they're never heard of again. So really, really horrible. So serial killer, that's probably one of the worst.

But what else? Because, you know, the Tinder Swindler was a huge documentary on Netflix. I'm going to imagine that people were using these to con money out of people right from the off. Oh, so many. I mean, one of my favorites, if that's the word, is the guy that the New York Times called the one-armed bigamist, every headline that they wrote about him. One-armed bigamist strikes again.

What I think is notable is that in this period of a really high crime wave emerging out of the lonely heart sads, both in Britain and America, around the 1880s, 1980s, 1900s, really around the turn of the century. It was impossible for police forces to keep track of people, right? There was no computer database. So if you married somebody in one city, stole all her jewelry and left in the night, turned up somewhere else, there was. no way to track that person. Absolutely no way. So as a result, when I would trawl through the newspapers, I found so many of these cases and yet it seemed no police network at the time had put them together. No one had said, oh my God, there's a crime wave. What are we going to do? There were other concerns. You know, newspapers at the time wrote about sort of criticizing Lonely

Hearts ads and saying no respectable person would use them. But actually, of course, what they really was scared of was the idea that through a lonely heart's head, you had the potential to meet someone outside of your social station, right? So I know. Exactly. And then what was going to happen, everything might collapse, you know, if a land girl married a lord. Yes. So that was really sort of the subtext of the criticism. Wow. I'm surprised that people didn't at least recognize the one-armed bigamist. You'd think he'd be easy to spot. What happened to him? Did he ever get caught? Yeah, he did get caught.

Again, that's why we know about him because he did get caught and it was reported in great detail in the New York Times. But, you know, then it's sort of sad because presumably it does put people off from placing lonely hearts ads, which, you know, can be such a terrific source of finding companionship. But these big crime cases, when they're reported in newspapers, inevitably they do understandably put people off or create a stigarch. that can be quite hard to recover from, I think, for many years.

It's such a shame that we don't have happy stories because they do, and they still, even today, dating apps and things have a reputation as being a bit dodgy. We've normalized them, but they're a bit dodgy. Sure. I mean, one keeps thinking the stigma will disappear entirely because you and I have so many friends who met, you know, by advertising for love, whether it's Tinder or whatever.

You know, we all do. It's so mainstream now. It is. But there are some strange people on those. There are. But I mean, there are in the world. This is true. What's the difference in a way?

This is true. Yeah. And I think it's interesting how that then shifts, you know, whether it's lonely hearts ads and newspapers through to dating websites like Match.com in the 80s and 90s. And then the rise of dating apps like Tinder or Hinge or Bumble. You know, the use of those, of course, has expanded and it's interesting to think about how that has changed what men look for in a woman

and what women look for in a man, how the history of human mate choice has changed just as a result of the medium through which we search. And also the social norms have changed. I really don't think that you would get very far on Tinder just saying, I need someone to look after the pigs when I'm at work. No. Or under 40 and not deformed. Under 40. Don't think you get away with that either these days. No. Probably not. Because it's, what we're looking for for people is it's not, we don't need somebody to have

money. Sometimes it's just people looking for a shag. I don't suppose there was any echoes of that in some of the earliest ones. Was there any kind of very early hookup culture here? Not in the very early ones. So the very early ones are revealing about what men looked for in a woman and what women look for in a man. You know, men were looking for women who were fertile, frankly, who were young, who could bear their offspring because the demands of evolution sort of at the time overrode

anything else. Equally, women were looking for men with resources, resources that could then support any ensuing offspring. And that has actually changed depressingly little. I mean, I would say our definition of resources has changed. So these days, it might mean like loads of Instagram followers or a great sense of humour. You know, anything that when Armageddon comes means that the children will be okay. But, you know, it doesn't have to just be like property or cash or loads of money in the conventional sense. But it hasn't changed as much as one might think. In terms of the sort of broader picture of people looking not for marriage but for casual relationships or just sex or any.

anywhere within that. That tends to come later really in the sort of 1840s and 1850s. And then you do get ads saying, oh, looking for fun and companionship or looking for a fun day out, you know, these sort of broad and very generalised terms. A couple of them then went to trial for obscenity, a couple of agencies that place these Lonely Hearts ads in there. There were dedicated Lonely Hearts newspapers like the matrimonial herons. old and the matrimonial chronicle. And they variously got in trouble for placing these ads,

which clearly were sort of just about sex. But again, it's hard to follow those up. It's hard to know what the outcome of any of those were. One of the things that always surprised me when I'm on dating apps and occasionally once in a while, I'll download them and then within an hour I've gone, no, I don't want to say this anymore. But is that you do find people on there that are going, I'm married, I just want to have an affair. And the whole Ashley Madison thing of people, That behaviour has always blown my mind because that's preemptively cheating. That's not like I met somebody sparks, flu, oh, it shouldn't happen, but it did. That's just going, I want to shag someone else. I just don't know who it is yet. It's very intentional, entirely intentional. Very intentional.

Yeah. Is there anything that you've ever found or something just like a husband seeks or wife or anything to suggest that maybe it was a facilitator for infidelity? Nothing like that, but it doesn't mean they didn't exist because, of course part of the obstacles of these lonely hearts ads is trying to decode some of the language in them. And that's, for example, is something that was very frustrating when I was searching for the earliest gay ads because of course they exist and that's a fascinating topic. And gay ads have been written about as existing from sort of the 1920s onwards. I, however, feel sure they existed earlier but they of course were something.

how using a lexicon that obfuscated their intention. You know, with homosexuality still illegal, people had to be, of course, incredibly careful about how they phrased what they were looking for. I mean, they obviously thought they were being careful, but some nowadays, they'll use phrases like, so there are some amounts that say things like, they sort of lean into cliches.

So they'll say sort of artistic and musical man really enjoys Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron and the opera. And I assume that those were trying to be a bit more overt about looking for a man to have a relationship with. You know, even I can sort of get what is being inferred there, that they felt they had to be so sort of, in a way, unsubtle and sort of say, oh, I like, you know, Oscar Wilde is one aspect of that. But it makes me feel sure that there are other gay ads out there that we are unable to decode. You've just got to learn the language, don't you? Exactly, exactly. And that's the same to your question. That must be the same with ours that are just looking for sex. I feel if we could decode the language more accurately, they probably are out there, but with so many, you know, references that we don't understand to popular culture or a book or, you know, a particular word that it just passes the modern historian by. So final question then, where did the phrase lonely hearts come from? Because they can't always been called that. Or maybe they're.

have. No, they weren't. Do you know, it's genuinely unclear. It's a pretty modern phrase. So it merges again in the 1920s and 30s. I think that's why, to return to the point we started with, I think that's why many historians thought these ads themselves didn't exist until the 1920s and 30s, because they didn't have the name, Lowy Hearts, as they weren't called those. They were called matrimonial ads for many, many years. So from 1690 to about 1920, they were always called matrimonial ads. perhaps because people started to realize they weren't just about matrimony and were about all sorts of other things as well, then they became lonely heart ads.

And that's the 1920s and 1930s. But you know what? It's really not until the 1960s and the 1970s that the language of personal ads that we understand today began to emerge. So GSOH for good sense of humour or would like to me tell WTM or all those sort of abbreviations. those only emerge once you really get a lot of ads of this sort in the 60s and 70s and lots of different publications. Then there's a tipping point. They become very mainstream and therefore a language that everyone understands does emerge.

Amazing. Francesca, you have been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? They can read my books, Shakley Ankle preferred, a history of the Lonely Hearts ad. And are you on social media or are you smarter than that? I am on social media as Francesca Bowman. There's lots there too. Thank you for talking to me today. You've been marvellous.

Of course. It's been great fun. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much to Francesca. Next up is my conversation with Anna Carrova, CEO of the dating app field. About where all of this leaves the current and future landscape of dating. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's Anna Carrova. How are you doing? Hi, it's really nice to be here. I'm doing great. I'm thrilled to meet you. You're the CEO of Field. That's pretty impressive. That must be a hell of an icebreaker at parties. It is, yeah. I'm going to the summit later this month, and we have to introduce each other in this group chat, and it just did.

And the amount of people just texting me, like in DMs, hi, I actually, Hughes Field. Yeah. For anyone that's listening, who's a little delicate, innocent person, can you just tell us quickly what is Field? Absolutely. Field is a dating app for the curious. It's for humans who are open to experiencing people and relationships in new ways. We're looking to explore themselves and meet others who are on the same path or other paths. It's a dating app, but a bit spicier than a dating app. Would that be fair? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is a way to describe it. Now, you, I say you, not you personally, but Field have just released a piece of joint research with the Kinsey Institute of All People, the gold standard of sex research at the moment. What brought that about? Did you approach them or did they approach you? And what did you want to find out? So we have worked with Dr. Justin Le Miller for a while on.

different projects and there can see a partner and we've always wanted to find a way to share insights from what we're seeing is happening on our platform we really believe that with all humility the kinds of experiences the kinds of data and the kinds of insights that we have on the field are incomparable to anywhere else oh yeah well I would say that like I'm I'm a sex historian and what you never, ever, ever get until really recently is that kind of information, that kind of personal preferences, what people are on that micro level. It's just never existed before. Yeah, exactly. One thing that I've experienced and I think a lot of people from the team have experienced is that we're seeing all these journeys that people have. We have

the privilege of receiving some of the stories people just want to share, but they don't always make it to the public in a way that is accessible and helps people see that there are so many ways that you can exist. And there's so many ways you can express yourself and experience relationships and others. And this report was kind of our way to show both how generational shifts are looking right now, but also to give insight into likely unexpected things and patterns, such as what Gen Z are actually fantasizing about. We would think it's one thing, but actually it's quite different. The difference between different generations as a whole,

how people define themselves and present themselves. And that's how everything came about. We launched it on September 4th to coincide with World Sexual Health Day. And we just wanted to really open new conversations around sexual health and relationships, which are really tightly intertwined. And this isn't a case of data scraping from your users. You use the platform to send out a questionnaire. And the first thing that kind of took me back,

and I don't know why it should. I should have known better than this, was the age range. I mean, it was thousands of people that responded to this, wasn't it? But it was aged 18 up to, was it 99? Yeah, as open as we can. Everybody. And what kind of questions were you asking people?

We would ask questions around what is people's preferred relationship style, what are they looking for, and what is their current relationship style, how they identify themselves. So even though we have this information in some ways, we wanted to make sure we offer people the ability to express that in that format. there's so much that people are openly sharing with us whenever we ask them questions like this. So we just wanted to create that format that allows us to publish it in a way for anyone to be able to kind of get to know and hopefully either find themselves or get inspired to look for themselves. This interview is following on from another interview that we did about the history of dating, in particular Lonely Hearts Adverts. I don't know if you're nearly the same age that I am,

but I can certainly remember newspapers with the Lonely Heart adverts. They kind of had this, I don't want to say it, but I'm going to say it, kind of like tragic feel to them. Like they were sort of a bit of a punchline if you were going to put an ad in a paper, you know. And then suddenly the dating apps arrived. And they seem to have changed that completely. It's no longer a tragic thing.

thing. Why do you think the dating apps managed to make it normal and cool and interesting, whereas the Lonely Hearts adverts for a very long time, they were kind of a bit desperate. I think one of the key differences is the equality of experience when you go on a dating platform. You have this kind of barrier to entry. You have to put yourself out there. You have to put your image or information about yourself and then publish it that way. I think one of the things with lonely hearts was that you're kind of putting yourself out there in a space and you don't really know who is seeing it. How are they responding? And there's just silence.

And I think it's actually really brave, if you think about it. There's a lot of bravery. Sure, it is. Yeah. And it takes a lot of courage to do something like this. I can't really imagine it right now. But today, to go on a dating platform, everyone has to go through that process of, being okay to put themselves out there. And I think that evens out the experience and it makes it

just less awkward. Can I put something that might be a bit controversial towards you? I have heard rumblings that people are starting to turn away from dating apps. Just little murmurs here, there and everywhere that people just hit a point where they're just like, oh God, I just can't be doing with any of it anymore. As the CEO of a dating app, what is your take on that? Yeah. I've heard more about it too. I think what people are turning away from isn't dating apps as a whole. I think people are rejecting being considered as just parts of a very transactional exchange. I think that's what people are saying no to.

So I think as long as dating platforms allow space for the humanity and the unique nature, and pace and rhythm of every human, they're actually incredible spaces. Where else could you meet someone like a stranger that you wouldn't cross paths with in your day-to-day life? So I think they're really powerful, but I think the rejection we're seeing, any rejection that we're currently seeing

has to do with how people perceive the whole experience, which can be transactional on many platforms. And people feel like they're being collected or they are collecting like little cards. I think that's the thing that is just not interesting. And it exists in various different, for various different reasons. One is probably there are many people using platforms now. So it's just endless.

And the other one is we're just craving more real, authentic experiences. There is a bit of impatience in dating sometimes. I think people want to go on the platform and just find someone like right now. that's not really possible. There is a lot that needs to happen for humans to find ways to connect to each other, not just connect technologically, but connect in depth. And I think if we put that patience and if we put ourselves out there and we're open ourselves to meet people as they are, real magic can happen. I like that. I read a piece of research about the dating apps and it said exactly that, that the reason that some people find them exhausting is precisely because of the

amount of choice, is that it's like choice overload. And then people kind of, they're not relating to them as people. It's like Pokemon cards or something. They're just, and you kind of lose that human interaction with it sometimes. Yeah. And I think right now, what people are looking for is probably a it more curation when it comes to the kinds of people they meet. Like there has to be something that you can hold on to that isn't an algorithm that tracks who you find attractive. But it's more to do with intention and has more to do with interests, probably. One thing that we see in field is we're trying to find what sets us apart. We often have this kind of exploration and kind of looking inward. Like what is it that we give to people? Can we give more of

do we need to think of other ways? And conceptually, one of the things we offer is this community feeling because people who come to field are really open. They might want something or they might be curious about something specific, but they're quite accepting and sort of non-judgmental towards what others want and what others might be looking for or what others might be into. And this open is allows for a kind of conversation. that is really honest, and that seems to really resonate with people. So it's not just about

what you look for. It's also where you are, who you are, and what and who the other people are. I love that. And you do have a very loyal fan base. I've been putting the feelers out from people I know, and the feedback is, oh, yeah, I like field. You do have that loyal fan base. But we should talk about the report, because there were some things that came out of that that I wouldn't have seen come in, I would have thought that Gen Z, after the pandemic and being locked in a house for a year and political instability and everything else that we've been going through, I thought they would be itching to be let off the chain and go completely wild. But the data you've got back is, well, you tell me what you found out about Gen Z. It's one of those things that is surprising at first,

but then you sit and think about it actually isn't that shocking. So what we found with this research is that 23% of Gen Z field members prefer monogamy compared to just 12% of boomers. I think that's the thing that's kind of challenging when you compare it to. You would expect it's probably the other way around. But if we dig in, we see that the most prominent relationship style for Gen Z currently in practice does remain ethical non-monogamy at 33%. This generation is practicing open. in relationships with a lot more confidence and comfort and are curious about monogamy, which is probably something they haven't fully experienced or explored yet. And if we look at different, like,

more older generations, they are more familiar with monogamy and they are looking to explore ethical non-monogamy. So I think the pattern here is really exploration and curiosity for relationships that are different and alternative to what people have experienced so far. And this is, people are looking for themselves and they're looking for others that way. When you said it like that, it's just made me think, so Genzi, a fantasizing about monogamy. Yeah. That's how I would put it. I love that.

So you've got all the boomers going, oh, God, I wish, I wish I could just open things up and experiment a bit. And Gen Z are so off the, they're so utterly wild, they're like, I'm fantasizing about settling down. I think I've become quite sensitive to assumptions that we put in these things. There is settling down is one thing, but I think being monogamous could be a different thing. Very true. That was a good catch. Yes. When you get data like this, how does that help inform an app like field? When you look at this, does it change what you want to do? does it, how does it alter things to know that Gen Z are sort of interested, more interested in

monogamy than we thought they would be? It gets our cogs turning for sure. We sit and we think. We talk to our community, to our members a lot and we have a lot of this kind of insights coming our way. And what usually happens when we are surprised is we either get a little kind of almost giddy to experiment and think big about something that we haven't seen in other platforms ever and something that we haven't thought about before at all and doing it with our members. Or we just feel confidence in something that we were already planning to do. I think one of the features we released recently is an example of this. One of the most requested features was the ability to add multiple partners.

and people to your profile. And we called it constellation to allow people freedom in what kind of partners they add. So instead of just sticking to this idea of multiple partners, we wanted to open it up so that people could sign up with friends if they're looking for friends. And that sort of fluidity is something that we consistently get inspired to find ways to express in the platform and find ways to enable expressing in the platform. I think when you see that Gen Z, for instance, are so open, by default, we just want to continue offering space for that expression and personalization that doesn't feel like it's putting them in the box, but also allows

them to stay exactly as they are, where they are, and how they feel. What about some of the older generations? I taught at university for years and I adored Gen Z and just how fluid they are. You can see it changing so much even within a few years, their understanding of what a relationship is and polyamory and friendships. Now they all merged together. What about the older generations? What information did you get coming out about them? Are they equally leaning into this sort of breakdown of what we think of a traditional

relationships? One thing that we found, which I found quite, it wasn't necessarily surprising, but I hadn't thought of it at all was that I already mentioned that just 12% of boomers, for example, prefer monogamy, but a significant portion of them, so almost 30% are looking for friends with benefits relationships. Wow. Oh, that's interesting. That definition in particular, which I found to be really interesting.

I don't know necessarily what to make of it, but maybe you have thoughts. Maybe my thoughts are that they're busy. The women in particular just can't really be doing with a full-time relationship. But if you could come over, give them an orgasm and maybe put up some shelves, that would be just about perfect. That's my... But don't listen to me. Talk to the Kinsey researchers. But that is fascinating, isn't it?

It's interesting, yeah. there is a sense of, I think, if I were to think about it, probably kind of confidence in one's life as it is right now and an openness to welcome people, but also explicitly state the kind of ways that you welcome people. Yeah, I could keep you here all day and just fire questions at you, but that would be extremely rude of me. But as a final question, we've been looking at the history of dating and how people met. I know you don't have a Christian. or ball, but what do you think is the future of dating and dating apps? Will it all move online? Do you think that eventually people will, they'll crave meeting in real life? Or what do you think?

What's your projected theory for the future of dating? It will be online and offline. I don't think we can stick to just one. We've seen it with the pandemic, which we don't want to talk about, but we do need in-person contact and connection in some way. We need tangible experiences. We need holistic physical experiences. And we're seeing it with the events we host in London. We're seeing it with the magazine we launched recently. People love that.

They need that. But it's not just that. You also need the technology because it's convenient. And it does allow for really diverse. experiences and connections. I think it makes you braver too. I think something like Fields, you can put fantasies and say a bit more about what you would. You'd never go up to someone in the pub and be like, hi, are you a dom?

I'm a sub. Do you fancy doing a scene? You'd get thrown out. But on something like Fields, you can really put that out there. But this is what I'm interested in. Anyone else? Exactly. It also allows for baby steps towards that.

Because if you are a Dom or a sub, there is actually a possibility for you to know. know where to go and to say that. But if you're not, and if you've never interacted with that world, like, there are baby steps towards that and it's usually online in the comfort of your home, feeling a little safer to do that. I also think diverse relationships will get more normalized. And we are seeing that, even in this report, I think people will feel a bit more, increasingly more comfortable to explore and almost build structures based on how they feel, when they feel good and when they feel whole and when they feel inspired. And it doesn't have to default to monogamy.

It also doesn't have to default to polyamory. It could be kind of whatever makes sense for the people involved at the moment. One thing that we talk about a lot is this idea of serving niche interest at scale. This is where technology actually really enables that. I think things that are considered niche before are becoming more accessible, and people are capable of exploring that and deciding whether it's for them or not. And I think this is only going to continue. But nostalgia, romance, I think they are here to stay and take new shapes as we go.

Anna, you have been fabulous to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming to. chat to us today. Are you on social media in case people would like to follow you and see more about the work you do? I am indeed, yes. It's Anna ANA underscore underscore Kerova, K-I-R-O-V-A. Brilliant. Thank you so much. You have been absolutely fascinating to listen to. Thank you too, Kate. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Francesca and Anna for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to swipe right to review.

and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hi, you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. Coming up next, we've got the latest instalment in our limited series, The Secret Lives of the Six Wives, and we are looking at Catherine Howard. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society,

a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.